Chapter 1: The Transmigrator’s Survival Guide
A rusted rebar pierced clean through the man’s chest. Thick, dark blood dripped steadily along the jagged iron.
The man stared wide-eyed in disbelief at the boy standing right before him. He collapsed to the ground, convulsed twice, and went completely still.
Seeing the man draw his last breath, the young boy casually wiped the streak of blood off his arm.
[W-W-Wait! That’s the very first living human you’ve seen since the apocalypse started, and you just killed him?!]
System 111’s shocked voice rang out inside his head.
“If I hadn’t killed him, he would’ve stripped my pants off,” Su Han muttered in disgust, smoothing down his rumpled clothes.
Today marked the seventh day since he transmigrated, and his seventh day scraping by in this apocalyptic wasteland.
Though he hadn’t yet found a mirror to properly examine his face, his slender limbs and fair skin suggested he was quite good-looking. In a lawless era where morals had completely collapsed, having that kind of appearance was an absolute death sentence.
Su Han sighed and kicked the corpse out of the way.
What else could he do? A person had to survive.
As it stood, he had transmigrated into a male-oriented webnovel titled Guide to the Apocalyptic Annihilation of the World—rumored to be a work written purely out of the author’s spite toward society.
The male lead, Shen Chengyin, was the eldest son of the prestigious Shen family. Swapped at birth by a treacherous servant and discarded at an orphanage, his childhood was a living hell. After the apocalypse broke out, he was repeatedly betrayed by everyone he held dear, battered relentlessly in body and mind.
In the end, driven past the brink of insanity, the proud chosen son detonated himself and wiped out the entire world.
To stay alive, Su Han had to rewrite the plot and keep the male lead from losing his mind and destroying humanity.
The only problem was: where the hell was he?
He had been crawling through the ruins for a full week, and this greasy middle-aged bastard who tried to assault him was literally the first living soul he had encountered.
[According to the plotline, the male lead founded Hope Base at the onset of the apocalypse and served as its leader. But right now, we’re already three months in…]
The system trailed off, hesitant.
Su Han took a deep breath, his prospects looking grim.
Three months into the apocalypse was the exact point when Hope Base weathered its first massive zombie siege.
It was also when the critically injured male lead was betrayed by his closest companions, had his chest carved open for blood, and was tossed beyond the gates to rot.
That was the first domino in the male lead’s descent into madness.
He prayed he wasn’t too late.
Su Han searched the dead man’s pockets, scavenged a few usable supplies to shove into his backpack, and ducked into the shadows to hide.
Anyone living comfortably three months into an apocalypse either possessed formidable combat skills or had a crew watching their back. Judging by the man’s short, pudgy frame, Su Han was willing to bet on the latter.
Sure enough, a moment later, two young men armed with makeshift weapons stumbled over. The sight of the body on the ground made their eyes redden instantly.
“Uncle Wang—!”
The other man gripped his shoulder and shook his head. “He’s gone. We need to get back to the base right now. Today’s the official ceremony for the Vice Leader taking full charge. If we’re late, we won’t even get scraps of meat to eat.”
The two swiftly collected themselves and hurried back to their vehicle.
As the truck rumbled into the distance, Su Han trailed stealthily behind it.
Half an hour later, the vehicle finally pulled up to Hope Base. It cleared security and rolled past the reinforced gates, leaving Su Han lingering in the perimeter outside.
In the original novel, the male lead had awakened a spatial ability early on. Relying on the mountains of stockpiled resources inside his dimension, he became the protector and leader of the base.
During the first zombie horde, he fought tooth and nail to protect his brothers and took devastating wounds, only for those very brothers to kick him while he was down. They tortured him to the brink of death just to force the spatial supplies to burst out of his core.
Su Han hid outside the walls for nearly two hours before he finally spotted a group of figures on the ramparts dumping a dark bundle over the edge.
Drawn by the sound, several zombies lunged forward and began ravenously tearing into the shape.
Raucous laughter drifted down from the wall. The sentries lingered for a moment to watch the gruesome show before leisurely strolling away.
The instant they disappeared, Su Han darted forward, severing the heads of the nearby zombies in clean, silent swings of his blade.
Yet when he knelt beside the bundle, the sight knocked the breath straight from his lungs.
Before him lay a mangled heap of flesh barely recognizable as human, chewed to ribbons by the undead. His chest had been carved open with a blade, laying bare cracked ribs and shredded organs.
Had that exposed heart not twitched feebly once or twice in the open air, Su Han would have sworn the male lead was already dead.
This fortress was filled with the very people Shen Chengyin had shed blood to protect, yet this was the fate they handed him in return.
A wave of sour pity stung Su Han’s nose. He scooped the ruined body into his arms and sprinted toward the dense forest in the distance as fast as his legs could carry him.
A massive base constantly drew zombies; lingering was suicide. But with his current stamina, Su Han couldn’t run far either.
He stripped off his outer jacket, draped it over the body, and sank against the leeward slope of a hill to catch his breath.
From beginning to end, he hadn’t dared lift the jacket to look at the man’s face.
The sight was simply too horrific.
Minutes ticked by, and the jacket over the body remained utterly still. Unease gnawing at him, Su Han carefully pinched a corner of the fabric and lifted it.
He saw the heart, shuddering in the ruined chest cavity with slow, erratic spasms.
He wasn’t sure if it was just his imagination, but the spasms seemed to be growing fainter… and farther apart.
One beat. Two.
[…Hey, his heart stopped.]
The system’s voice shattered Su Han’s daze, snapping him back to reality.
The person before him was gone. He had turned into a cold, lifeless corpse.
Su Han frantically pressed his trembling hands against the limp form, but met only ruined flesh—no different from raw meat on a butcher’s slab.
“Shen Chengyin!”
“Shen Chengyin! Don’t you dare die!”
Su Han’s mind went completely blank.
He was finished. The male lead was dead. The mission had failed before it even began.
He didn’t want to be trapped in this zombie-infested hell forever!
[Are you insane?! Screaming like that will draw the zombies right to you!] the system warned urgently.
Zombies had degraded sight and smell, but their hearing was razor-sharp. Until now, Su Han had always kept his movements practically soundless to avoid detection.
Snapping out of his panic, Su Han immediately dropped into a defensive stance.
It was too late.
Before his fingers could close around the hilt of his machete on the ground, a guttural snarl tore through the air right beside his ear.
Forced to abandon the weapon, Su Han flung himself into a sideways roll.
A low-tier mutated zombie grazed his shoulder, crashing into empty air.
A mutated zombie possessed sickening speed and brute strength far beyond that of standard walkers.
It was tough enough to handle one solo, but being disarmed put Su Han at a fatal disadvantage.
Having missed its initial lunge, the creature instantly whipped around and pinned Su Han hard against the dirt.
Rotting skin and foul slime dripped onto Su Han’s face. Gritting his teeth, he locked his hands around the monster’s throat, shoving upward with every ounce of strength he had.
He refused to die here!
The mutated beast was terrifyingly strong, steadily forcing Su Han’s arms down inch by inch.
At this rate, his forearms would snap like dry twigs.
Desperate, he gathered his strength to twist violently to the side and roll free. But right then, a wet squelch sliced through the chaos, and the crushing weight on his hands abruptly vanished.
The mutated zombie’s head flew from its neck, rolling across the leaves and dirt.
Panting raggedly, Su Han stared at the weapon that had severed the skull in a single stroke.
It was the very machete he had dropped moments ago.
He kicked the headless carcass away, scrambling back—only to see a silhouette towering over him.
The figure was draped in Su Han’s jacket, his features obscured in the shadows. All that was visible through the tangled curtain of black hair was a pair of blood-red, sinister eyes.
The look in them made one thing abundantly clear: he wanted to tear Su Han apart.
